Why Rand Paul Can't Just Say No To White Supremacists

Earl Ofari Hutchinson has a good article at the Grio on Kentucky GOP Senate candidate, Rand Paul and his relationship to the white supremacist community. Rand Paul was previously criticized for having a white supremacist, Chris Hightower, as a campaign operative and for criticizing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his father, Ron Paul has been connected to white supremacists as well.

Former Vanderbilt professor and self-described “ethnic separatist” Virginia Abernethy gave Paul $500 in March, records show. Separatist movement leader William Johnson gave Paul $500 in August, 2009, and Carl Ford, a Mississippi attorney, and a former member of the separatist League of the South, gave Paul $400 in March. Paul campaign spokesperson Gary Howard shrugged it off as much ado about nothing, “We cannot perform background checks on all of our 35,000 plus donors.”

At first glance, Paul’s spokesperson is right. In the second quarter of this year, the Paul campaign reported contributions of $1.1 million. The disputed $1,200 from white supremacists is a bare drop in the campaign money bucket. But the money that he received from the white separatists may be the tip of Paul’s racist funding iceberg. The assorted neo-Nazi, KKK, and Aryan nation groups have thousands of members and can funnel considerable funds to a cause or a candidate. It’s no stretch to think that Paul is the candidate that they feel most comfortable giving too.